Choo Chee curry: the red curry named after a sizzle

10 July 2026 · 3 min read · Rim Thang Thai, Glenelg

Most dishes are named after an ingredient or a place. Choo chee is named after a sound — the 'choo chee' sizzle that thick coconut cream makes the moment it hits a hot pan. The story cooks tell is simple: if the pan isn't hot enough to sizzle, you're not making choo chee.

It's one of the lesser-known Thai curries in Australia, which is a shame, because for plenty of people it quietly becomes the favourite — the one they order every visit once they've tried it. Green curry gets the fame and red curry gets the shelf space at the supermarket; choo chee just gets reordered.

A red curry, reduced

Choo chee comes from the same family as red curry — red chilli paste and coconut — but it's cooked down further, so the sauce turns thick, rich and glossy. It coats the food rather than pooling around it. That shine isn't a trick of the camera: it comes from coconut cream splitting slightly in the pan, releasing its oil and carrying the red of the chillies with it. The name alone tells you how it should be cooked — real heat first, then a patient reduction until the sauce clings.

The balance shifts too. Choo chee runs a little sweeter and rounder than a standard red curry, with less raw chilli bite and more perfume. Spicy, yes — but polished rather than punchy. If a red curry is a shout, choo chee is the same voice, lower and closer.

The kaffir lime finish

The signature garnish is kaffir lime leaf, sliced into fine shreds and scattered over the top just before the plate leaves the kitchen. It isn't decoration. Cut that thin, the leaf releases its citrus oil straight into the warm coconut sauce, so you catch a little of it in nearly every bite. It's the same leaf that goes into Tom Yum whole — here it's doing close-up work instead.

Ours is finished the same way, with broccoli, carrot and zucchini through the sauce for freshness and crunch against all that richness.

If you like this end of the curry spectrum — reduced, rich, coconut-cream heavy — its closest cousin on our menu is the Panang beef, which we slow-cook for four hours and serve at a fixed $22.50. Choo chee is the quicker, brighter one of the pair; panang is the deep, slow one. Plenty of tables end up trying both across two visits.

How we serve ours

In Thailand, choo chee is most often made with fish or prawns — the thick sauce was practically designed for seafood. On our curry menu you can have it any way you like: tofu or chicken at $21.90, seafood at $25.90, or the combination at $27.90. Want it the traditional way? Seafood is the pick.

We cook it fresh each night at 39 Jetty Rd, Glenelg — a family-run Thai street-food kitchen, dinner from 5PM seven nights. Order it with jasmine rice and let the sauce do what it was reduced to do, in the room or as takeaway. Either way, listen for the sizzle.